The reference in this specification to any prior publication (or information derived from it), or to any matter which is known, is not, and should not be taken as an acknowledgment or admission or any form of suggestion that that prior publication (or information derived from it) or known matter forms part of the common general knowledge in the field of endeavour to which this specification relates.
Conventional rubbish and waste sorting plants generally include a central conveyor belt carrying a mix of materials. The mix of materials are sorted into bins or containers by human operators who stand adjacent the central conveyor belt. The operators stand above a series of fixed bins, immediately below each operator, and throw or drop items picked from the central conveyor into the bins. Each bin is designated for collecting a different type of material, e.g., brick, timber etc. Each operator is assigned to select and pick only one type of item from the incoming mix of materials, and drop items of that type into the bin allocated for that type. If the mix of materials includes a large proportion of items of one particular type, a plurality of operators can be assigned to pick that type of item.
The inventor has identified a number of problems or difficulties with conventional rubbish sorting plants, including one or more of the following:                (a.) due to the unskilled nature of waste sorting, human resource issues are endemic, and often adversely affect the performance of a waste sorting plant; for example, high operator absenteeism can result in items of an absent operator's type ending up in the landfill component (at the end of the conveyor) because the operator is absent from his or her station, or because the volume or flow rate of items of the one particular type is too great for the remaining operators to handle;        (b.) all operators need to be present at their respective stations for conventional systems to work most efficiently, and operators do not work efficiently if their corresponding type of material is not uniformly or consistently present in the mix;        (c.) the conveyor belt needs to stop while the bins below the operators are emptied, resulting in lost productivity;        (d.) the quality or purity of separation of the sorted materials can be insufficiently consistent or high; and        (e.) some recycling plants may be configured only to receive small and/or consistently sized items (e.g., small bottles as found in domestic waste), and/or may be complicated and/or expensive to construct and maintain.        
It is desired to address or ameliorate one or more disadvantages or limitations associated with the prior art, or to at least provide a useful alternative.